The St. Clair Tunnel

There are two plaques at this location.
Both can be seen on this page.

Photo by Alan L Brown - Posted September, 2004

Plaque Location

The County of Lambton
The City of Sarnia
On the north side of St. Andrew Street
between Christina Street South and Vidal Street South

Coordinates: N 42 57.461 W 82 24.614

Plaque Text

The first international submarine railway tunnel in North America was built here, 1889-9, by the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada. It connects Sarnia with Port Huron, Michigan. To compete with U.S. railways for the lucrative Chicago and mid-western freight and passenger traffic, the Grand Trunk required uninterrupted access to these areas. A ferry service across the St. Clair was considered unsatisfactory and a bridge impracticable. The tunnel and its approaches, over 3 km long and including 1837 m of iron tube, were built under the direction of Joseph Hobson. Electrification of the line through the tunnel was completed in 1908 and remained until the introduction of diesel trains.

Photo by Alan L Brown - Posted June, 2009

Photo Source - Wikimedia Commons

Plaque Text

This was the first subaqueous tunnel in North America and one of the great engineering feats of the 19th century. Built in 1889-1891 to link the Canadian mainline of the Grand Trunk Railway with Chicago, the tunnel is 1,837 metres long with a 6-metre bore. Joseph Hobson, a Canadian engineer, designed and supervised its construction. His innovative combination of cutting shield excavation, cast iron tunnel lining, and compressed air broke the transportation bottleneck caused here and elsewhere by the impossibility of tunnelling through soft riverbeds.

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